The System of the World

Leicester House
HALF AN HOUR LATER

“IN THIS COUNTRY, as you may know, there is a tacit rule, observed by all the Nobility and Quality, Tory and Whig alike, forbidding the use of the Mobb in politics.”

“I had no idea,” said Princess Caroline, “but then I suppose that is what makes a thing tacit.” Her English had gotten rather better during her weeks in London.

“No doubt when your royal highness shall reign over a peaceful and contented Britain, the rule shall be observed without fail,” Daniel continued, “as it has been now for at least a quarter of a century.”

“Except for during Parliamentary elections, of course,” put in the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm.

“Naturally,” Daniel said, “and the odd church-burning or assassination. But I cannot be certain that it shall be obeyed tonight. On both sides of the Whig-Tory division I have lately seen a worrisome want of discretion. Bolingbroke’s position, just now, is at once formidable, and fatally precarious. He is like a man who has scaled most of a stone wall with his fingernails and reached the point where he can just peek over the top, and see a safe place to stand-even as the danger of losing his grip and falling to the rocks below has never been greater. Now he will flail about and grasp at anything that might enable him to heave himself to safety. Why should he stick at violating this rule concerning the Mobb, just this once?”

They were in a chamber in Leicester House that had probably been styled a Grand Salon on the architect’s drawings, ?ons ago. By the time the plaster had dried and the Stuarts had moved in, it had probably been called a salon; nowadays it would be a salle, or a walk-in closet. None of your froth of Rokoko plasterwork here. It was lined with wooden panels that never stopped popping. They were a shade of brown that was darker than black. Its several windows looked out over Leicester Fields, but these had been annihilated by clever shutters that could not be distinguished from wall-panels without assiduous knuckle-rapping. It was small, dark, and mean, but Eliza seemed to like it, and Daniel had to admit that on an evening such as this one there was something comforting about the place.

“This Mobb is oft spoken of, but never seen,” said the Princess.

Daniel Waterhouse and Johann von Hacklheber, at the same instant, filled their lungs and opened their mouths to explain to her that she was wrong. But each hesitated, thinking to let the other speak first, and so the next voice heard was Caroline’s. “You are about to curdle my blood with Mobb-tales, I know,” she said. “But to me the notion is philosophically offensive. Doctor Leibniz has given much deep thought to the question of collective entities, such as a herd of sheep, and concluded that these must be regarded as aggregations of monads. What is true of a herd of sheep is more true of a Mobb of Londoners. They are all individual souls. This Mobb is a fabrication of minds too lazy to treat them as such.”

“Yet I have seen the Mobb,” said Daniel. “Some would say, I have been it.”

“And yet you are as intelligent a man as ever God made,” Caroline said. “This proves that the Mobb is an incoherent concept.”

“I got a taste of the Mobb, the day Dappa was chased down Threadneedle Street with a bounty on his head,” said Johann von Hacklheber. “Though made up of individual souls, it did have a sort of collective will about it.”

“Pfui!”

“This is idle,” said Eliza, “you can take it up with the Doctor in Hanover. We must tend to matters at hand. Johann, on the day that Dappa was taken, the Mobb had been incited by hand-bills printed and distributed by Charles White. How do you suppose Bolingbroke might animate the Mobb in the present crisis?”

“Understand, your grace, that ninety out of a hundred in the Mobb are simply criminals who want only the lamest of pretexts to run riot,” Daniel said. “They are like the charge of coarse powder in a musket’s barrel. It is detonated by a pinch of fine powder in the weapon’s pan. Which is to say that one provocateur, moved by Party Malice, might incite ten or a hundred of the rabble to run amok. Bolingbroke will have such provocateurs posted in squares and streets where they can sway as many as possible. In order to inspire them-to put fire to the pan-powder-he needs only some small scandal or incident. Among other things, he might expose the presence of Hanoverian spies in London.”

“I see,” said the Princess. “It was foolish for me to have come, then.”

“No, for it may have spared your royal highness’s life from the assassins of de Gex,” said Daniel.

“It would have been foolish,” said Johann, “to have come here without having been prepared for this night.” He locked eyes with his mother as he said this. Eliza stood up.

“Mother and son have been cleverly at work,” Caroline guessed, “while the silly Princess has been delighting in her naughty adventure.”

“ ’Twas ever thus, and ever shall be, as long as we have Royals,” said Eliza. “You may repay our labours by doing deeds that are beyond our scope.”

“Easily said,” said the Princess. “At this moment, what can I-”

“You can fly, and fly well,” Eliza said. “Royal flight is a grand tradition. Elizabeth, Charles II, Louis XIV, the Winter Queen, all had to fly at some point in their lives, and all carried it off well.”

“James II did it poorly,” Daniel reflected. Then, not to be a party-pooper, recovered with: “But you are made of better stuff.”

“And unlike him, the Princess has friends, and a plan,” said Johann, “though she doesn’t know it. I can set this plan in motion with a word. Is that what you recommend, Dr. Waterhouse?”

Now this was a rather weighty matter to have placed on Daniel’s shoulders. As a younger man he’d have been paralyzed by the responsibility. But all decisions had come to him easier, somehow, since he had learnt that he was supposed to be dead anyway. “Oh, by all means,” he said. “You must fly. But I would have a word with her grace, if the plan permits it.”

Eliza smiled. “The plan calls for Johann and Caroline to change clothes first of all,” she said, and excused the two of them with a smile, and a flicker of the eyelids. Johann turned away, blindly thrusting a hand behind him, and Caroline’s hand dove into it like a falcon stooping on game, and thus they made for the door, he striding, bent forward, and she floating, erect as a Princess was supposed to be. As they gained the anteroom, Johann began to distribute commands, in German, to various persons who had quietly convened there during the quarter of an hour since Daniel had arrived. One of these thrust his head and arm into the room, favored Eliza with a deferential nod, and Daniel with a flash of the whites of his eyes, and pulled the door to so sharply that every panel in the room gave a sympathetic pop.

“You are alone with me,” Eliza observed. “A scenario oft sung of by the poets of the Kit-Cat Clubb.”

Daniel smiled. “If they sing of this, I shall be likened to Tithonus, who was granted ?ternal life, and turned into a cricket.”

“As a ploy,” Eliza said, “your modesty serves. I see how it must work on those who are young, vain, and do not know you well. To me who know you better, it is grating. Please speak plainly, without flattering me or deprecating yourself; we do not have time.”

Daniel inhaled deeply, like a man who has just been doused with icy water. Then he said: “I bring you news concerning Jack Shaftoe.”

It was Eliza’s turn to gasp. She turned her back on him so quickly that the hem of her skirt sawed at his ankles. She retreated several steps, then arranged herself on a bench between two of the shuttered windows. Daniel stood sideways to her, so as not to dwell on the pinkness of her face.

“I was led to believe you were pursuing him. How can-”

“I am doing so, and I will catch him,” Daniel said, “but this has not prevented him, clever chap that he is, from contriving a way to place in my ear certain words that were plainly intended for you.”

“And what are those words, sir?”

“That everything he has been doing lately, he has been doing out of love for you.”

“That is a very strange way of showing love,” she returned. “Making counterfeit money for the King of France, and blowing people up.”

“He has not actually blown anyone up,” Daniel reminded her, “and as for the King of France, some would point out that he is also the liege-lord of Arcachon.”

“Thank you for pointing it out,” she said. “Is that the entire message?”

“That he loves you? Yes, I believe that is it.”

“Well, when you catch him, you may give him my answer,” she said, rising to her feet, “which is that the decision he made at the wharf in Amsterdam was the sort that cannot be unmade; and as proof, one need only behold what Jack has become in the thirty years since-all of which might have been predicted from the choice he made on that day.”

“I have an inkling that Jack is now striving to become something rather different,” Daniel said, “which you may not have predicted.”

“That is what young Jack-who, I must admit, was a dreamy lad-would have done,” Eliza said. “The wretch that he is now is not capable of it.”

“Never was a mailed and spiked gauntlet more harshly thrown down. I am off to the Black Dogg now,” Daniel said, excusing himself with a careful bow, “and I shall deliver that fell challenge to Jack, if fortune leads me to him.”